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Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

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    #16
    Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

    No that is not what I meant. The client already had purchased Acrobat. What they did not buy was the server part that provides automation of more of the process. I tried to find an alternative to Acrobat for form enabling the PDF. I think I found something that would do it (it has been a few years), but there was no SDK to allow automation from within Alpha.

    So back to acrobat. To avoid buying their expensive server piece I just fed keystrokes to Acrobat from Alpha, simulating a user going through the manual process of form enabling the PDF. A hassle to set up, but it has been working for 4 years just fine.

    Bill.

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      #17
      Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

      Bill

      Wishful thinking on my part about being able to create a fillable pdf form in A5. I will go back to chasing how close I can get without incurring costs to the customer or myself. I am glad to hear you were able to populate the form with data from A5. In my other thread, I was able to use the data from the form and simply use and action script to import it to an A5 table. Even with that I have a long way to go with the process, its has too many 'bits' to it. I did contact LibreOffice and they did tell me I could develop against their product. So perhaps I can scheme some office automation processes on that side of things.
      Regards,

      John W.
      www.CustomReportWriters.net

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        #18
        Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

        I will be interested to hear what you are able to accomplish.

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          #19
          Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

          Bill

          I am still a noobie with A5 but I did just now take a look at the Amuynia (sp) PDF printer driver (the Active X component) in Visual Studio. This is the one that comes with A5. It has a huge number (literally dozens) of properties. At first blush it appears a person can code against them. If true you should be able to create fillable pdf forms in A5 and then possibly extract the data. It includes the email properties and host of other things. I still am pretty clueless about using Active X controls/components in A5.
          Regards,

          John W.
          www.CustomReportWriters.net

          Comment


            #20
            Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

            Things may have changed, but I called them back when. Even though there was a SDK, it was not able to do what I needed, which was
            1. define form enabled fields
            2. set properties for the fields such as word wrap.
            3. have a button on the form to Submit, which actually creates an email with attachment automatically addressed back to us.
            4. work in Adobe Reader

            I can't remember which part(s) they could not do, but I know 4. was one of them. It required some proprietary Adobe code.

            Bill.

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              #21
              Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

              I will keep probing, but it is quite likely I will be compelled to work from my orginal workflow which included the FoxIt Reader and LibreOffice. Too bad if that proves the case to my way of thinking.
              Regards,

              John W.
              www.CustomReportWriters.net

              Comment


                #22
                Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

                I know this comment is late to the discussion but this take a look at the following product for extracting data from PDF's. It's very ecomonical.
                http://www.a-pdf.com/data-extractor/index.htm
                The latest version of LibreOffice as of May 2013 can create PDF that can be filled in with Adobe and then saved. I've done it!

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                  #23
                  Re: Is anyone loading data into A5 from .pdf form and bar codes

                  i'm using data from a pdf from and importing it into a table.

                  I can post the entire routine, if anyone wants, but main part about extracting the fields and data can be done with these 2 functions.
                  the text variable is extracted using the file_pointer.read_line() function from the fdf file that contains the form data.
                  fields=*pattern_extract(text,"*|/T(*)")
                  data =*pattern_extract(text,"*|/V(*)")

                  then I wrote some code to put it into this format so it could be imported:
                  "field1","field2","field3"
                  "data1","data2","data3"

                  the fieldnames in the pdf have to match the fieldnames in the table.

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